Morning Links: Monica Lewinsky Edition

Monica Lewinsky, from her government ID photo by the office of the Secretary of Defense.

COURTESY WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

The artist who painted the portrait of Bill Clinton that hangs in Washington’s National Portrait Gallery says he painted a shadow of the Monica Lewinsky scandal onto the canvas. [The Guardian]

Tatiana Trouvé’s Desire Lines, an art project commissioned for Central Park by the Public Art Fund, goes on view today at the Doris C. Freedman Plaza near 60th Street and Fifth Avenue. It’s composed of miles of colored rope that, if unwound from their spools, would stretch along every inch of the park’s 212 paths. [New York Times]

Islamophobia is being turned into art in Berlin at the Hate Night Poetry event, during which a troupe of German journalists with vaguely Muslim-sounding names have an opportunity to read out some of the more creatively abhorrent messages from their inboxes. [The Guardian]

The politics of Miami’s art scene are getting a little out of control—nearly half of Miami’s art institutions are without leaders, and powerful patrons, unruly trustees, funding issues, and rivalries between ethnic groups aren’t making things easier. [The Art Newspaper]

A group of Russian Orthodox artists and intellectuals has launched an arts journal in an effort to promote the role of religious art in our contemporary secular society. [The Art Newspaper]

Jeff Koons and Cindy Sherman will donate new work to the Foundation for Art and Preservation in Embassies to be displayed in American embassies and consulates around the world. Koons will make a new series of prints and Sherman will create a new edition of photographs, both of which will come in limited editions of 50. The works will debut in Washington, D.C., on April 20, and individual embassies can lobby for the pieces at that time. [The Art Newspaper]

Sotheby’s has announced that it will boost its commitment to the middle market (the market below the highest-profile sales). Patrick McClymont, Sotheby’s chief financial officer, says that this won’t result in a change in strategy, but will instead broaden the marketing plan that the auction house put into action in the second half of 2014. [The Art Newspaper]

More than 700 items from Lauren Bacall’s personal belongings will be auctioned off by Bonhams on March 31 and April 1 as “The Lauren Bacall Collection” at their New York Madison Avenue galleries. The collection will be available for public viewing from March 25 to March 30. [New York Post]